School Name
Department
Course Name
Number of Students and Number of Sections
Faculty Name, E-mail, Telephone
Number of Faculty Starter Kits
Bookstore Contact Name, Address, and Telephone

Place an order with the NIU Bookstore

Faculty will be given an ISBN number by the eInstruction representative which they can use to place an order through the NIU Bookstore to have students purchase CPS kits for their courses. When placing an order with the bookstore, faculty should provide an ISBN number, the number of pads and the eInstruction fax number (940.565.0959) for the bookstore to send the purchase order.

eInstruction will contact faculty members within 10 days by sending them a test kit, set-up instructions, a receiver and the CPS software. A faculty set-up code will be sent in an e-mail.

Install the CPS Software

Please make sure that you download the ITS supported version of the software at NIU. This will be the version that will be installed on the smart classroom computers. If you choose to install the software from the CD, check the ITS Clickers (CPS) page to make sure that the versions match. Or you can directly download the software from the links on the ITS website at: http://its.niu.edu/its/clickers/index.shtml.

When the installation begins, follow a series of prompts to install the software.

After the installation is complete, you will be asked to reboot your PC.

Create or open CPS database

If you are opening CPS software on your computer for the first time, you will be asked to either create a new database or open an existing one. CPS database is a file with a .cps extension that contains your classes, students, lessons, reports and attendance records. You can have more than one database in CPS, but you can have only one open at a time.

Select ‘Create a new database'.

Specify the location where you would like it to be stored. The default location is ‘My Documents' and give it a name. If you are going to be storing lessons and grades for a number of sections of Spanish 101 you teach, you can name it FLSP101 or Spanish101, for example.

Link your Blackboard class to CPS

• Log in to Blackboard by going to http://webcourses.niu.edu.
• Select the course that you would like to link to CPS.
• Once you are in your course, click on the Tools link on the left:

• Then click on CPS Connection

• Next click on My CPS Page link. Make sure session cookies are enabled in your browser. Please follow the instructions on this page if you are using Internet Explorer version 7 or higher to enable browser cookies.

• On the next page, click the Enable link next to the course in which you are using clickers.

• You will be prompted to create a CPSOnline account if you have never set it up before. Your username and password don't have to be the same as your NIU Novel login id and password. The CPSOnline password won't expire like your Novel password typically does. If you have previously set up CPSOnline username and password, you can specify those. Click the Continue button.

• To set up a CPSOnline account, create a username, password, select a security question and provide the answer to it. Next, click the Submit button.

• Select the end date for the course. Instructor Setup Code will be provided for you automatically. Click the Submit button.

• Click the OK button on the confirmation page. Students can now register their clickers.

Import your Blackboard class to CPS

• Open CPS software.
• Click on the Prepare tab.
• Click on the Classes & Students tab.

• Choose the Import button.

• Select Blackboard from the list of import sources.

• Enter your CPS-Blackboard Connection username and password and select Northern Illinois University from drop down list of institutions.

• Select the class you would like to import or you can "Select All" if you would like to import all classes

• Enter you NIU Blackboard username and password.
• Click Done.
• Next to the class name you will see the number of students in that class. If you see 0, that means that none of the students have registered their clickers yet in your class. You will see that number change once they start registering clickers.

Sync CPS with Blackboard

• When in CPS, click on Classes tab.
• Highlight the class you would like to sync by right-clicking on it.
• Select Update roster from Blackboard server.

• You may be prompted for your Blackboard username and password. After CSP syncs with the Blackboard server you should have updated roster information.

Last Updated: 05/24/2010